Saturday, October 29, 2011

Jafo, who is one of the newer WoW gold bloggers who writes over at The Auction House Grind, has a post up with a new discovery from the World of Warcraft Public Test Realm (PTR): Sinister Squashling Pet Is BoE. Jafo found the Sinister Squashling to no longer be Bind-On-Pickup on the current PTR. Hopefully this change makes it live with WoW Patch 4.3. This news comes a little late for many of us, especially since we've already deleted a bunch of these companion pets this Hallow's End. If you do happen to get yet another duplicate, don't delete it. Save it in hopes of a future change in the bind status of the Sinister Squashling companion pet. If these Sinister Squashlings become tradeable, they will be yet another option in the WoW companion pet selling business.

Remember, the PTR isn't gospel. Although it's not much risk to save your extra Sinsiter Squashlings just in case they do become tradeable, take findings from the PTR with caution. Hopefully, if these companion pets do become tradeable in WoW Patch 4.3 or later, Blizzard will retroactively change the bind status on the already looted Sinister Squashlings. I believe that to be the most likely option, especially in the wake of the new Pokemon wanna-be Pet Battle Sytem coming in Mists of Pandaria.

Strategy For Selling Sinister Squashlings

If the Sinister Squashling becomes tradeable and sellable on the WoW auction house, you will need a strategy for selling your new companion pet. If the change occurs in Patch 4.3, hold onto your Sinister Squashlings. Most players already have a Sinister Squashling with the increased drop rate from the Loot-Filled Bags this Hallow's End. Wait and sell the Sinister Squashling in a few months when others have already unloaded there companion pets for a lower price. By waiting to sell, you should get a higher end sale price than if you were to sell closer to the Hallow's End holiday.

Friday, October 28, 2011

It's Hallow's End still in World of Warcraft and as always we are busy killing the Headless Horseman in an attempt to get some rings for our alts, the nice plate HHM helm for Transmogrifying, Tricky Treats for acheivements, or the awesome Headless Horseman Mount. Just like with the Coren Direbrew Large Brilliant Shard farming strategy during Brewfest, we can take advantage of the Headless Horseman dungeon queue.

When the Headless Horseman is dead, most players will just leave the queue and go on with whatever they have planned. I am almost always the last one left in the Scarlet Monastery Graveyard once the Headless Horseman is no more. These players are leaving the instance before taking advantage of the instant port inside the Scarelt Monastery Graveyard. It's the Scarlet Monastery Graveyard where there are always 1 or 2 Chests. Wait for the others to drop the group before opening, so you can ninja the chest contents all for yourself.

Chest One

In the image above, I have marked in Red the possible locations of the 2 chests within the SM-G instance. Once the HHM is dead and everyone leaves, I make sure to check both locations. The chest up towards the front of the instance is always there, sometimes it is locked. Just backtrack towards the front of the instance and do a U-turn to the right once you enter the torture area. The chest is always located there around the corner to the right.

Chest Two

The 2nd chest is one that may or not spawn in the HHM instance you create. It is located down the crypt at the back end of the instance. Just head down towards where the SM-G end boss would normaly be located. If the 2nd chest spawns, it will be on the last level (on the left side) before hitting the bottom of the crypt. This chest can also be locked, but often is unlocked.

Why bother checking these Chests?

Blue Gear - some great twink items can come out of these.

Recipes - often times you can find a recipe to flip for a nice chunk of gold.

Green Gear - much of the gear in the chests is level 28 and 29, which is perfect for selling to twinks.

Raw Materials - Cloth, Ore, Bars, etc.

This year I have found a River Pride Choker (+4 Str / +9 Sta lvl 28 blue neckpiece), which is a BiS for some Twinks, and a couple of +9 Str / +9 Sta level 29 Green Mail Leggings, which are also good sellers for melee dps twinks. I also have found some low level recipes and plenty of raw materials and vendor trash, not to mention the coin inside the chests.

So take advantage of another holiday boss port and spend an extra couple of minutes and check those Scarlet Monastery chests. You may find something well worth your while too. Remember to bring engineering seaforiums, blacksmithing keys, or a rogue to open the chests in case you get the locked chests in your instance.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

There are 5 elemental essences that date all the back to Vanilla WoW. Four of these essences drop off of elemental mobs and the 5th drops off of undead creatures. In Vanilla WoW you would often see alchemists transmuting one essence to another because of the varying scarcity and different market values. Many of those old Vanilla WoW methods of making gold with essences are still viable ways to make gold in WoW today in the Cataclysm era. If you come across some cheap essences from the WoW auction house, have some tucked away in your guild bank, or collect some of them while leveling, then hopefully this post will give you some options for making gold through profession use with those essences.

Essence of Air is used in 2 of the major BoA and lower level twink agility weapon enchants. Depending on how Transmogrification turns out, there may be more demand for the Stormshroud armor set, which also takes Essence of air. Currently, the 2 best uses of Essence of Air are:

Enchant Weapon - Agility (+15 Agi)

Enchant 2H Weapon - Agility (+25 Agi)

Essence of Earth

Essence of Earth is used in a lot of Blacksmithing recipes as well as a few Tailoring, Jewelcrafting, and Engineering recipes. The best use for making gold with Essence of Earth is from another BoA/Twink Enchanting recipe:

Enchant Weapon - Strength (+15 Str)

Essence of Fire

Essence of Fire is used in a ton of recipes. A whopping 32 crafting recipes total, but few are profitable to a gold maker. The two best uses of Essence of Fire to make gold in WoW are:

Fused Wiring

Enchant Weapon - Fiery Weapon

The Fiery Enchant is always a popular enchant for both twinks and leveling characters. Fused Wirings can also be crafted for a nice profit or the Fused Wirings can also be used as a crafting component in some of the Engineering crafted companion pets.

Essence of Undeath

Essence of Undeath is the least valuable of all 5 of these elemental Essences. The 2 best uses for making gold profits are:

Enchant Weapon - Unholy Weapon

Enchant Weapon - Lifestealing

Essence of Water

Essence of Water is another essence with a ton of recipes (33), but again very few are worth much to a gold maker. The profitable options to make gold with Essence of Water are:

Enchant Weapon - Healing Power (+29 SP)

Enchant Weapon - Icy Chill (Also takes 1 Essence of Air)

So if you find a supply of cheap Essence check back and see if any of these profession crafting options are going to be profitable on your server. Of all of these, Fiery is the hardest for me to keep in stock since the demand for it is so high. Hopefully you can find an essence to add to your snatch list to give you another options for making gold in the World of Warcraft.

Monday, October 24, 2011

Last week we saw a plethora of new ideas being released at Blizzard's annual convention, Blizzcon. One of the major announcements at the 2011 Blizzcon included the new WoW expansion, Mists of Pandaria. Along with a new player race, the Pandarian, and the new player class, the Monk, we got word of yet another talent redesign, which looks pretty lame in my opinion. We also heard of the plan for Battle Pets, or companion pet (vanity pet) battles. Just like with PTR data, the information and ideas that come out of Blizzard each year don't always make it to the live servers in World of Warcraft. Remember the Path of the Titans? Yup, that got scratched. Hopefully we will be see the Battle Pets concepts added to World of Warcraft.

WoW Companion Pet Battles

Mists of Pandaria is planned to bring the companion pet battles to Azeroth with the next WoW expansion. The battle system sounds very similar to a Pokemon style pet battling system. As gold makers in WoW, we are salivating at new possibilities to profit from the WoW Battle Pets system. Some of the ideas tossed around included:

Customizable Companion Pet Names

Possible Customization With Items

Fighting Pet Vs Pet In Arena Style Fights

Unique Abilities For Each Pet

New Rare World Drop Only Pets

Gold Making Implications Of A Companion Pet Battle System

As with any new addition, we golbins are always looking for new ideas to make gold in WoW and this Companion Pet Battle System could be very rewarding. For starters, if you aren't already running a pet shop business in WoW, it's time to get started! I recently expanded my pet selling business to include selling on the opposing factions auction house, where the profits are much higher than the neutral auction. The Blizzcon announcement of the new Companion Pet Battle System, should help to spur even more players into collecting pets, which means be ready to meet their needs to make more gold in WoW.

The possibility of the rare and unique pets having their own unique abilities could also lead players with all of the common pets to seek out more of the rarer pets, so if you have some of those rare pets or Argent Tournament Pets, now may be a great time to start unloading them. Once we get a full resource detailing each of the companion pets special abilities, we will see the value of the various pets changing based on how much that pet will be useful for the companion pet battling.

If the ability to rename your pets comes from a player crafted item, like the current Hunter pet name change item, then the profession that crafts those name changing items will see some nice sales. If pets can use an item or 2 we most likely will be seeing those pet items crafted by 1 or more WoW professions, which will be an all new market for us to experiment in come Mists of Pandaria. At this point I recommend getting into the pet selling business if you haven't already and keep an eye out for more news on these other gold making possibilities coming in Mists of Pandaria.

Friday, October 21, 2011

The 2011 Cataclysm version of the in-game holiday, Hallow's End, has seen some major revisions. Gone are the old ways of making gold in WoW during Hallow's End. Mask and Wands can be bought off the vendor. The Bobbing Apples no longer give a buff and neither do any of the trick-or-treat candies. There are some nice new changes to the Hallow's End holiday though, including a new quest chain that upon completion awards one of the new companion pets, The Creepy Crate.

Hallow's End Costume Wands Now Worthless

The new Cata version of Hallow's End has all but killed off the Profiting From Costume Zaps strategy that I have been using every year since the achievements were added to World of Warcraft. Selling wand zaps was an easy way to make gold in WoW during Hallow's End with a little barking. Not anymore. The costume wands are now available from Hallow's End vendors and the trade chat channel is now filled with players looking to "trade zaps for the achievement." Every bark I do asking to sell costume zaps, is followed up with people barking they are trading zaps for free. No sales this year for costume zaps.

The Creepy Crate Companion Pet Quest

Inside the inns of both the Horde and Alliance capital cities, you can start a new Hallow's End quest chain. Upon completion of the new Hallow's End quest chain, you will be awarded with a new companion pet, The Creepy Crate. The quest chain is pretty easy to complete, but there is an opportunity to profit off of foolish players who are also completing the Creep Crate pet quest. One of the quests in the chain for the Creepy Crate quest requires you to collect 5 herbs (you pick them inside the capital city), 5 Crystal Vials, and 5 Arcane Powder.

The funny thing is that even though the Reagent vendor and the Alchemy Supply vendors that sell the needed vials and arcane powder are located very near the quest giver, some players will still rush to the auction house to buy the Crystal Vials and the Arcane Powder while completing their Creepy Crate pet quest. The vendors are right next door to each other in Org, but I started selling Arcane Powders and Crystal Vials within minutes of tossing them on the auction house. I'm selling the 5 stacks for 22 gold each. Some people are just clueless and every time there are new holidays, new achievements, or new quest required items added to WoW, there will be chances for profiting off of the less informed players in WoW.Who else has been selling Crystal Vials and Arcane Powder to Creepy Crate pet collectors?

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

How you price your goods in World of Warcraft will serve to either help or hamper your ability to make gold in World of Warcraft. Underprice your goods and you could be selling at a loss. Overprice your goods and they may not sell at all.

Cost to Craft - The cost to craft includes the materials required to craft your item.

Minimum Profit - This is the minimum amount you are willing to make from providing your crafting service.

Price Range - The range at which the item will sell. You set your Selling Threshold based on the lowest amount you will accept for your goods (Cost to Craft + Minimum Profit Desired) and you set the Fallback price to the highest you think you can sell the item for.

Overpriced - Pricing yourself out of the market by asking a price that outprices the item's demand.

Key Points:

You can improve profit by either lowering your Cost to Craft or increasing your Price Range.

There does exist a threshold for each item that is too costly and the item will not sell.

It takes time, practice, and patience to determine the best Fallback Price that brings in high profits and steady sales.

You want to keep your Fallback Price as close to the Overpriced threshold without losing too many sales.

Since you pricing choices will effect your bottom line profit, remember not to post your items too low or you will be working for peanuts. Don't outprice your item's demand either, or you won't even make a sale. Practice at finding the happy medium within the Price Range that works well for your server.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Remember the passive income experiment with the guild of all random invitations? Every member in this guild is either a random invite or one of my alts. I use an Invite All Macro and spam invitations to unguilded players after doing /who searches. We just hit guild level 20. We still don't have the Bountiful Bags guild perk, but I now get a BoA helm for my twink. We do nothing as a guild except leech the guild perks. I own the guild and collect the gold from the perks. Current earnings from the Guild Cash Perks are 9,578 as we hit level 20. That's pretty much passive income now as I rarely invite players anymore.

Epic Gems are a super hot topic right now as we have learned a lot about the fate of Jewelcrafting recipes, Alchemist Epic Gem transmutes, and Epic Gem drop sources that will be coming in WoW Patch 4.3. Here is a collection of some of the best blog posts and discussions on Epic Gems from around the WoW gold making blog-o-sphere. If you are looking to make gold off of Epic Gems in Patch 4.3, then be sure to check out these great reads from various authors and sources. Can't wait to start making gold in WoW with the Epic Gem additions coming in the next major WoW patch.

It's going to cost 5 Illustrious Jewelcrafter's Tokens for each Epic Gem recipe cut, per the PTR. A second option costs only 4 Illustrious Tokens, The Tome Of Burning Jewels, but the recipe it awards is chosen at random. You get the option of spending 5 JC tokens for the new epic gem cut of your choice, or pay only 4 Illustrious Jewelcrafter's Tokens for a spin on the wheel of random recipe selection. Um, no thanks.

Should I Buy Epic Gem Cuts For 5 Or Tome Of Burning Jewels For 4?

As a Jewelcrafter looking to make gold in WoW, you will be much better off by spending the 5 Illustrious Jewelcrafter's Tokens on the top earning Epic Gem cuts for your server. This will help ensure that you are not wasting your Illustrious Jewelcrafter's Tokens on Epic Gem recipe cuts with weak gold earning potential. Once you have a solid arsenal of profitable Epic Gem cuts that are in high demand, then you can try the more risky option of going for random Epic Gem JC Recipes. Be careful though, do you really want to risk 4 JC Tokens on a chance to get a +Hit/+Expertise Epic Gem or another garbage green epic gem cut? Just pay the 1 extra Token and pick the Epic Gem pattern that you want. Forget the risk, take the smart approach and buy your patterns wisely.

Do you have a bunch of JC Tokens saved up or did you start to buy more recipes thinking that your JC tokens would become useless? I have 60 saved up at the moment, so that's an easy 12 patterns to get me started once WoW Patch 4.3 drops.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

﻿﻿Selling At A Loss To Drive Away Competition
Do Other Auctioneers Think It Works? Yes.
Does It Really Work? Only Against Fools.

Selling at a loss means you are selling your goods on the auction house for less than they cost you to craft or for less than you originally paid for the item you tried to flip. Common reasons you may see someone selling for a loss include:

I tend to also refer to this "selling at a loss to scare away competition" tactic as "bullying others out of the market." The idea is this:

Your market has too many competitors and undercutters.

You are getting less profit per sale than you would like.

You start posting your items in large quanitites and at rock bottom prices.

This forces your competition to sell for less than you, often for a loss per sale, or stop selling.

Once everyone stops selling for the stupid low prices, you return to a less competitive market.

You raise prices back up and get more profit per sale.

In a market full of idiots, you may see some success. This tactic can work, but usually only temporarily and very rarely will it work against a seasoned WoW gold maker or an intelligent competitor. Why? Because we are wise enough to see through the glyph wall or the rock bottom bullying pricing structure. In response to your low price bullying tactics, a seasoned WoW auction house veteran will:

Buy out your poorly priced items to sell later for a profit.

Wait out your pricing blockade and return to the market once prices rebound. You can't continue to sell for a loss forever and why would you want to?

Protecting Yourself Against Low Pricing Blockades

If you are a newer auctioneer or a poorly diversified auctioneer, then you are much more succeptable to this type of low priced market bullying. If your main WoW gold making tactics are within a single market, then you have no choice but to follow suit and sell for lower prices to compete with the market bully or jump out of the market all together. If you are wise, you should check back and re-enter the same market once the prices raise back to a more profitable selling price.

I've always preached about the need for leveling additional crafting alts, as well as the need for more diversification on your WoW auction house market investments. Having multiple crafters with multiple profession coverage diversifies your crafting and earning options. Having multiple profitable markets available to you allows you to easily step aside during undercutting pricing wars, low priced market bullying, and bear markets and you can always return to the same market once the higher profitable prices return.

If you only work in 1 market, then you are going to be heavily handicapped when compared to the seasoned veterans with more market options and staying power. Regardless, don't fall for the scare tactics that some auctioneers believe will work to get you out of their market. Have patience to return to a bull market and diversify your options to protect against all types of unprofitable market collapses.

BTW - I am a bit of a greedy goblin. There are 3 other Rich Purple Silk Shirt players on the Jubei auction house market and they insist on putting their shirts on at 30 gold each. I tend to buy them out and bark:

“Are you sure you are [Epic] ? What colour is your shirt?? [Rich Purple Shirts] to complete the set. AH NOW!!”

And I manage to sell 3 or so at 180 gold each, but I do end up with a bit of a monopoly over the market and a stack of pre-made Rich Purple Silk Shirts.

I also have had fantastic luck, as Mageweave is really cheap on our server. I get some Lavander shirts, pink shirts, as well as the formal shirts at 5 gold per, and they are my main bread and butter from shirt sales.

Funnily though I make more money from my tailor than I do with my Jewelcrafter. That somehow feels wrong, but whatever gets the job done I guess.

All the best mate and God Bless!

Kind Regards,

John Vergara

Thanks for the submission John! I love it when I get supportive email, but it's even cooler to see that readers are actually using some of the auction house tactics and WoW gold making tips that I provide here at Cold's Gold Factory. It's nice to see that you have been barking items in trade chat as well. Barking is a great way to increase your sales both on the WoW auction house and with direct player to player sales.

The Colored Shirt Market and Transmogrification

John brings up a great niche market here that I predict is only going to become even more lucrative. What market is that? The Shirt market is a nice niche market right now, but I bet it will see a nice demand spike after Transmogrification (Mogging) comes to World of Warcraft in Patch 4.3. Once Patch 4.3 drops and players are completing their gear sets to transmogrify, the last piece of the puzzle will be getting a Shirt that matches your chosen gear set.

I'll use my goblin warrior twink, Goldgrub, as an example here. Once Patch 4.3 brings Transmogrification into WoW and I have my twink gear set completed, I will be Mogging all of his armor to gold colored gear. At that point I will probably want to change his shirt to something yellow to match the yellow / gold colored gear set. Of course I will just make it myself, but most WoW players will turn to the auction house to find their gear matching colored shirts. This should be an even better market than it is currently, thanks to the introduction of Transmogrification in Patch 4.3.
Keep an eye on the potential of the colored shirts market.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

There are times when you will do a search on the World of Warcraft auction house to gauge your competition and you will see the wonderful notice "No Items Found". Having no other items on the auction house to compete with your items is a wonderful thing. No competition. No undercutters. No wall of glyphs. No stupidly low prices. No crashing market. Nothing. For an unpredictable amount of time, you will have complete control of the entire market pricing for that one item. You never know when the next person will come along to undercut you. You may not have much time to capitalize on this wonderful opportunity, so strike hard and fast.

Buy Low, Sell Normal?

Some bloggers or players will tell you to "Buy Low, Sell Normal". This is never my philosophy. Why would you want to limit yourself to selling at the market value all the time, especially when you have no competition? Having no items found is your opportunity to profit from your own pricing structure. This is your chance to reset the current market value, regardless of whether you are flipping an item, or selling a crafted good. If you choose to sell at a price around the normal market value, then you are doing more harm than you might think.

Pricing In Excess Of Market Value

When there are no items found on the WoW auction house for my chosen item, I like to reset the current market value, or asking price, to a minimum of at least 120%. Depending on the demand on the item, I can raise the price to 200-300% of normal market value and still have the item sell.

Pricing Over Market Value:

Raises the price at which eventual undercutting will begin.

Increases your profit per sale.

Gets you more gold for the same amount of work.

Can lead to an increase in actual market value over time.

Starts to inch the auctioneer scans of other players up over time, which can be used to fool auction scanning programs into a higher perceived value.

May lead competitors to also raise their pricing structure.

Example Markets

Rich Purple Silk Shirts

These are all great benefits that should be considered when choosing to elevate the price or not. The best items to elevate are the items that are in high demand and are constantly being purchased. Better yet, if you have an item that has less competition to begin with, like my Rich Purple Silk Shirts market. I haven't seen a competitor EVER, so I set my prices based on the threshold at which they will still sell at a decent volume. For my server that seems to be 35 gold per shirt.

Solid Sky Sapphires

In a market with competition I can still get away with the price gouging. Eventually over time some markets learn the new pricing system that I am helping to create by posting higher priced items. A good example from my WoW gold making is the Solid Sky Sapphire. The market value according to the auctioneer tooltip shows the Solid Sky Sapphire priced at 35 gold. Some days I have competition and they sell from between 25 to 40 gold for each Solid Sky Sapphire. On days with no competition, I keep the price constant at 75 gold per gem, as you can see in the Undermine Journal image below. They still sell because of their high demand. If I chose to sell at the normal market value, I would be pissing away extra gold that could have been made.

Solid Sky Sapphire Jewelcrafting Sales
(Click to Enlarge)

Parting Thoughts

So don't sell yourself short. Learn and understand your market and the items that you craft within that market. Don't settle for just "Selling Normal". When you get the wonderful "No Items Found" notice, experiment with how high you can jack the price up and still get away with making sales. Maybe others will follow suit and you will all have to work easier for the same gold. Remember in a market with heavy undercutting like Mysterious Fortune Cards or Glyphs, if there are no other items posted on the auction house, the price that you decide to set the new market price to is also the same value that undercutting will begin. With smart competitors, you will see them undercut just below your new higher prices. In theory, if the beginning of the chain starts at a higher price, then the end of the chain will end at a higher price.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Learning about the auction house markets for specific items and categories is highly beneficial for understanding your server's individual market cycles. Some WoW Auction Market Cycles are more easily predicted due to commonalities across multiple servers, like the tuesday upgrade cycle or the weekend materials floodings. Other cycles are going to specific to your server and will take time and research to grasp an understanding. Taking advantage of the up and down pricing within the WoW auction house markets is how many of us make gold in WoW.

Item prices can vary from day to day, patch to patch, and even hourly due to spikes in sales or lack of supply. Hell, some markets see more ups and downs than a hooker's panties at a bachelor's party on a Saturday night! Knowing what is valuable, how much it will sell for, and when to sell are three prime components of the auction house manipulation game. Items can be purchased when mispriced and flipped on the WoW auction house for easy profits with little to no time or work commitment involved.

How To Learn Your WoW Auction Market

There are many key components involved with learning and understanding auction house markets within the World of Warcraft. Here are the 4 most important concepts to master in order to grasp knowledge of your market and its pricing swings.

Research

Add-Ons

Time

Predicting Change

Research

Research is the first place to start when looking into a new market. The Undermine Journal is by far going to be the best tool for you to use to look at historical data on any specific WoW item that is traded on the auction house. Checking out the item on The Undermine Journal will show you great information such as quantity being listed and swings in pricing. Recent sales data as well as who has been selling the item is also useful information to ascertain.

Add-Ons

WoW add-ons such as Auctioneer, Trade Skill Master, and Auctionator can all assist you in learning the market values of items. These add-ons are not as accurate as The Undermine Journal. The Undermine Journal pulls the data from the auction house servers once per hour, while our individual add-ons only estimate market values based on the actual auction house scans that we perform with these add-ons. These WoW add-ons also are based off of the listing prices of items, not the selling prices. This leaves the ability to falsely manipulate perceived market values to trick the add-ons into convincing you something is a great buy and worth flipping for more gold. So if you rely on only add-ons to tell you the market value, you can't be completely confident in the market values given.

Time

Time is another factor to consider. In order to fully understand the ins and outs of a specific market, you need to be constantly checking on the prices of that market. That equates to closely monitoring the prices of your crafted items and the materials available. When using daily searches for low priced materials and stocking up when the price is right, you can weather through the price spikes of your required raw materials. The longer you are working in a market the better feel you will get for the price fluctuations within that market. After a while, you won't even need market research anymore and you will engrain the market value and the possible profits deep within your number one tool for making gold in wow, your brain.

Predicting Change

Predicting spikes and drops in demand of WoW items is very important for both increasing your profits quickly as well as avoiding losing potential profit on items that will soon see a decline in value. I'm not talking about speculation, which tends to be a more high risk / high reward prediction based on no concrete evidence. What I mean is using the information that we know will be added or changed to fully prepare for the market swings that those changes will brings. Deductive reasoning and logic will help you interpret things such as the official WoW Patch notes and announcements of upcoming game changes.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Today's post here at Cold's Gold Factory is brought to you by BlackFriday.Info. Here's a word from our first official site sponsor:

Are You Catering To Shoppers Or Purchasers?

Remember there are different types of buyers on the World of Warcraft auction house, both shoppers and purchasers, and they buy items off of the auction house in different ways. In short, purchasers buy the finished crafted products from the auction house, while shoppers buy the materials and have the item crafted for a tip or fee. You can profit off of both shoppers and purchasers.

Walnut Stock Sold Incoming Mail

An example would be shown in the above image. Not only do I sell the Patch 4.2 crafted Engineering epic gun, Extreme Impact Hole-Puncher, but I also sell the Hair Trigger and Walnut Stock on the auction house. Why? Well, Purchasers will go to the auction house and buy the epic engineering gun. A Shopper will look for the materials and have it crafted in person to save some gold. Usually a pre-crafted item already has some profit figured into the purchase price of the item. By providing the materials themselves, a shopper can often save some gold on the purchase even with the fee or tip figured into the new cost.

What I have found is that these vendor bought items do sell on the auction house. They are mostly likely sold to someone who found the materials listed in someone's Engineering profession link that was just shopping for all the required items via the auction house. This buyer was probably also unaware that the items were available from a vendor or were too time consumed to gather the items themselves. Either way, there is gold in flipping vendor items for those shoppers that gather all the materials from the auction house.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

That's right! It's finally going to happen. Chaos Orbs will no longer be soulbound to your character. This is one of the upcoming changes in WoW Patch 4.3 that has been confirmed by a blue post. Head over to the mmo-champion link to see for yourself.

Chaos Orbs Will No Longer Be Soulbound

Anyone In The Group Gets A Chance To Roll On The Chaos Orbs

Chaos Orbs Will Be Tradeable

You Will Be Able To Buy Chaos Orbs On The Auction House

The Positive And Negative Effects Of Tradable Chaos Orbs

This change to Chaos Orbs is both good and bad news depending on how you currently use and value your Chaos Orbs.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Welcome to all of my new and returning readers! Each month I do a recap of the month prior and highlight ten gold posts or gold guides that appeared during the previous month. I highlight the top 5 most popular and the 5 with the most comments / best discussion. Be sure to check these articles out, if you missed them when they went live.

Due to the lack of posts while my home computer was down, there where a much lower number of overall posts. This month, I will have enough content released to fill both Top 5 lists during the next monthly recap.

Now is a great time to sign up to become an affiliate for the MFC Mastery guide as sales have exploded lately with the recent wave of endorsements on the various WoW Gold Making Podcasts. Your readers are buying the product. Earn some cash by referring this awesome guide to your friends, guild members, or readers. I pay 40% of the sale total (which is a 50/50 split after fees are deducted) when you refer a buyer. Why not refer others and get paid too?

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Yesterday I gave you the Top 10 Reasons It Sucks To Be A WoW Gold Maker, but there are plenty of good things to outweigh the negatives. Making gold in WoW can be a lot of fun, but can also be a headache at times. Still though, as WoW gold makers, we continue to push for that bigger bankroll. We continue to look for new ways to make gold. Why? Because that's what greedy goblins do. We enjoy lining our banks with WoW gold. Here are 10 more reasons for making gold in the World of Warcraft.

10 Reasons It Rocks To Make Gold In WoW

You can't get the most out of a GDKP run if you are broke.

You can gear out, max the professions, and entirely support all 10 characters on your account.

You can use your gold to bully other players around when they step into your market.

Opening hate mail is so much fun.

It feels nice to line your pocket with the gold of the ignorant, lazy, and clueless WoW players.